Yours, Juli

by Thalia Lark

  She scowled, but refused to meet my gaze. ‘Hurry up, Lori,’ she shouted.

  I reached out a hand and shoved her shoulder, hard enough that her body reflexively spun towards me. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  She shrugged me off impatiently and faced the other side. Her face was set like stone in an irritated frown, but as I glared at her, her eyes slowly reddened and filled with moisture. I was so frustrated at her being so moody and difficult that I couldn’t bring myself to soften my tone.

  ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘If you don’t know then it’s obviously not that important,’ she said, staring away from me determinedly.

  I raised my hands again in an unknowing shrug, my brow knotting in frustration. ‘I’m lost, okay? What’s the matter?’

  She spun on one heel to face me suddenly, drawing herself up to her full height so she had an inch’s advantage on me. She shoved a hand just below my collarbone as she glowered at me, two silent tears dripping almost invisibly off her jaw. ‘What’s wrong is that you’d rather kiss a boy, you stupid prick.’ Her voice whipped out in a sharp hiss, too quiet for the others to hear, though they were starting to stare at our face-off in confusion.

  I narrowed my eyes, irritation rising in my throat. This time though, the anger wasn’t overpowering or uncontrollable. It was the pure exasperation that the average person experienced thousands of times in their everyday life; it was the anger between any two friends or colleagues or partners who were fighting. It was the normal anger a person felt when someone else pissed them off, the type of anger I’d never been able to experience before because I’d been too damn closed-off and unwilling to accept friendship.

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ I snapped. ‘That’s why you’ve been avoiding me? That’s why you glared at me across the kitchen the other day? You’re angry because I said I’d rather kiss a fucking boy?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be? If you’d rather kiss a boy, then what the hell has all this been about?’ She motioned between us with two fingers, turning her back to the net so the others couldn’t see, her eyes glittering.

  I scowled at her. ‘I can’t believe that’s what you’re so pissed off about.’ I laughed darkly, my expression equally infuriated. ‘Of course I’d rather kiss a girl, you idiot. I’ve never wanted to kiss a boy in my life. And I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone as much as I’ve wanted to kiss you, so get off your fucking high horse and stop treating me like a pariah.’

  That shocked her, and some of the anger slid from her face. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’ I could feel energy pumping through my body as I scowled into her pale face, my shoulders gradually relaxing as her hazel eyes widened and glistened. ‘Now stop bloody crying before they all start to think something’s wrong.’ But my tone was gentler, and my features were more relaxed.

  Then suddenly she laughed, turning away from the others and brushing her tears away hurriedly. ‘I think it’s probably too late for that.’ Her voice was thick, but she lifted her chin as she turned back to face me, refusing to cry in front of her friends.

  That was when thunder rumbled quietly in the distance, and Sarah called across to us. ‘What’s going on? Are we playing or not?’

  Alex nodded briskly, stepping away from me to her side of the court and waving a hand. ‘Yeah, yeah. Serve the ball.’

  ‘What were you two talking about?’ Sarah asked, looking suspicious.

  I shrugged. ‘She was taking her bad mood out on her tennis partner.’

  Alex glanced at me furtively, repressing a smile as she readied herself for the next round. We’d barely begun though when it started spitting. I felt the gentle rain hit my arm and craned my neck to look up at the sky, surprised at how swiftly the thunderheads had carried. I sighed, scratching the side of my nose thoughtfully. Apparently the others had the same thoughts as me, because Lori suddenly asked: ‘Shall we call it quits?’

  ‘Yeah,’ everyone agreed.

  I followed Alex around the side of the net and collected Lori’s and Emma’s racquets. My two friends gathered around me tightly looking confused and slightly alarmed.

  ‘What on earth was all that about?’ Lori whispered.

  I shrugged. ‘Nothing. Just a misunderstanding over the game.’

  Emma looked at me seriously. ‘You know, you don’t have to take any crap from the older students. You can let one of the teachers know if Alex is giving you a hard time. It’s not the first time she’s picked on the younger students.’

  I had to stop myself from laughing both at how far Emma was from the truth and how easy it was for me to visualise Alex pestering younger students. I looked at the racquets in my arms and shook my head at my friends. ‘It’s fine, really.’

  ‘Alright,’ Lori said slowly. ‘Well, shall we go back up to the rec room before the heavens open?’

  I glanced at the shed, where Alex was stashing her and Sarah’s racquets. ‘Sure. I’ll meet you there, okay?’

  They both nodded a little uncertainly and headed towards the gate. Sarah had obviously been told a similar story, because she followed my friends, casting an anxious glance over her shoulder towards Alex and me. Sarah’s eyes were suspicious as they met mine. Did she fear I was bullying Alex or something? I clenched my teeth together to suppress more laughter, thinking how mundane their fears all seemed and how little I cared at that moment, before I shouldered the racquets and sauntered to the shed. I met Alex at the open doorway, dumping the racquets inside and looking past her.

  ‘That was some game.’ Her confident and authoritative air had returned and she looked across at me haughtily.

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘You’re a prat, you know that?’

  She shrugged unaffectedly. But then she hesitated, her shoulders relaxing forward and the skin around her eyes creasing repentantly. ‘That was pretty thoughtless though, wasn’t it? To be such a dick over something so insignificant when I know you’ve – you know – got shit going on.’

  ‘Is that an attempt at an apology?’

  She shrugged and smiled a little in embarrassment, seemingly knowing she was already forgiven, before closing the shed door and sitting down on the damp ground with her back against the shed.

  ‘Our pants will get wet,’ I said, following suit in my already damp clothing.

  ‘We’ll change before dinner.’ She paused, then looked sideways at me, her eyes serious as they appraised my face. ‘How did the meeting go with your mum and the principal?’ She reached up a hand to gingerly touch the subtle bruising lining my jaw. ‘I take it not that well.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’ll tell you about it some other time.’

  ‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath. ‘So where to from now? With us, I mean.’

  I retrieved a stick from the ground and scratched the end into the floor. ‘I don’t know.’

  She waited a moment, then asked: ‘Do you want to go out?’

  I wanted to tell her yes, but somehow I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure if there was some part of me that still couldn’t completely fathom the idea that I was interested in a girl, whether there was a part of me still denying it, or whether there was a part of me that still believed that this was all just a phase. More pressing was the constant fear in my chest of what would happen if I was honest about it. I still feared what my classmates would say. Would they laugh? Would they tell me I was perverted? Would they just sit around making snide remarks behind their hands about how I was a lesbian? Of even more importance was how my mother would react. I knew she was firmly against it, even if she wasn’t particularly religious anymore. And despite how little intimacy there remained between us, I still had to live with her for the next four years. Infuriating and embittering her by being in a same-sex relationship didn’t seem like the best way to help that stretch along.

  Alex waited patiently while I stared at the floor. I finally sighed, and rather than lie again and say I didn’t want to date her, I told her about Harvey. ‘This guy in my grade asked me out, and
I told him yes.’

  ‘Do you like him?’

  I shrugged. ‘Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know.’ I sighed again and put my head in my hands. ‘Why couldn’t you have been born a guy, Alex?’

  ‘Duh, because you wouldn’t like me then. Besides, isn’t that what Harvey’s for?’

  ‘How do you know it’s Harvey?’

  ‘He’s stuck to you like Velcro for the past two weeks.’ She smiled a little, scratching a fingernail over the ground absently. ‘Are you going to keep going out with him? Like, are you officially boyfriend and girlfriend now?’

  ‘I don’t know. We haven’t really talked about that sort of stuff.’

  The rain was increasing steadily around us. The shed and palm trees overhanging the tennis court fence provided some shelter to Alex, but I was getting wet through. There were four students left kicking the ball around on the oval in the dim light, but everyone else had disappeared inside to avoid the rain.

  ‘I don’t want you to think that I don’t care for you,’ I said, avoiding Alex’s eyes. ‘Because I do. I’m just…not brave like you.’

  ‘I think you’re brave,’ she said. ‘But I understand if you need a little more time to come to terms with – well, with how you feel. That doesn’t mean I want to be just friends though.’

  I sighed, looking at her with my head to one side tiredly. ‘I don’t either.’ I gazed into her hazel eyes, which seemed so deep at that moment it made me feel simultaneously as though there was a part of her I would never understand, and as though I understood her completely. Alex frowned, pushing her damp, auburn hair behind one ear and studying me, and I wondered if everybody had that unfathomable corner of their soul or just her.

  ‘I want to keep seeing you,’ she said.

  My stomach clenched at the thought of being in a relationship with her. I felt a tingle run through my body, amazed at how different she seemed sitting before me at that moment. She suddenly wasn’t the tall, mature and aloof young woman I’d watched from a distance and idolised with the subconscious regret that she would never look at me the same way; she was young and open and hopeful suddenly, her hazel eyes sparkling and full of feeling, her pale face glistening with thousands of tiny beads of moisture.

  I took a deep breath as I stared at her. ‘I want that too.’ My eyes flickered to her flushed lips for a moment, then I forced my gaze back to her eyes. ‘But—’

  ‘Hey, I’ll go undercover for a while if that’s what you need.’

  I pressed my lips together. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’ She paused to tear a damp leaf up into tiny pieces that stuck to her fingertips, then she smiled surreptitiously. ‘What are you going to do about Harvey?’

  I frowned. ‘I can’t just dump him. I mean, he makes me feel…normal for once. I’ve always been that student who people gossip about, you know? Mostly because I did stupid things like wag class and smoke and—’

  ‘Get high?’

  I smiled. ‘Yeah. Having a boyfriend – well, it makes me blend in. And I think I need that for once. It’s just – I mean, I just need to…’ I sighed, not knowing how to put it.

  ‘Just figure stuff out?’

  I pressed my lips together and nodded.

  Alex hesitated, and then she reached over and gripped my chin between thumb and forefinger, turning my head so I was forced to meet her eyes. She studied my face with a serious expression, a small crease between her eyebrows, and then she took a deep breath. ‘Sorry, but I have to ask again… Do you like him? And you have to be honest, because I don’t want to – you know, be liking you and all…when you’re into someone else.’

  I gazed at her for a moment, and then I slowly shook my head. ‘No. I don’t. He’s a good friend, and I like him in that way, but I’m not interested in him… Not in the way I’m interested in you.’ Then I sighed, looking down at my lap. ‘But…’

  ‘It’s okay if you want to keep this quiet, Juli.’

  ‘It’s just – there’s just too much going on already.’

  Alex nodded softly and gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. ‘Really,’ she said. ‘It’s fine.’

  I smiled a little, savouring the warmth of her hand around mine.

  Interrogations

  I was alone in the dormitory at lunchtime two Saturdays later, lying on my bed with my English workbook, a Biro, and a copy of Romeo and Juliet open on my pillow. I’d skipped lunch due to nausea, the result of medication and my looming date with Harvey that afternoon. I scribbled out the sentence I’d just written, knowing I’d have to employ help during Tuesday’s tutoring session to start forming a plan for our term paper, which was due in two weeks. So far my answer to the essay question was: I don’t give a flying crap, which I didn’t think would pass as satisfactory.

  There were quiet footsteps from outside and I turned my head to see Lori enter the dorm looking grave. I frowned and dropped my Biro on the mattress, propping myself up on an elbow. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She didn’t speak, only climbed my bunk ladder and stretched herself out beside me on her stomach as I moved over to give her room. She picked up my copy of Romeo and Juliet and starting leafing through the pages at random. Then her eyes dropped to my workbook and she frowned.

  ‘I’m not sure “I don’t give a flying crap” is going to cut it with Mr Warner.’

  I smiled, then glanced at her with a furrowed brow. My date with Harvey had over the week somehow increased in number to six, as Noelene and James had asked to double with us, and then Gideon had finally asked Lori out and, needing moral support, she’d asked if they could triple. I wondered if anything had happened with Gideon, and then desperately hoped that nothing had, as that would certainly be something that required in-depth talking. I wasn’t brilliant with girly chitchat at the best of times; providing support and sympathy on matters of heartbreak was wholly unfamiliar territory and not, I deduced, something I would be particularly good at. Nevertheless, Lori was my friend, so I felt obliged to enquire after her relationship status.

  ‘Is everything okay with you and Gideon?’

  She nodded slowly. ‘Sure. You and Harvey?’

  ‘Fantastic.’

  Then she turned her head and narrowed her eyes at me. ‘How about you and Alex?’

  Somehow I managed to keep my expression under control. ‘Um…what?’

  ‘I thought I was your best friend,’ she said, her tone hurt as she frowned at me.

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I would never judge you if you liked a girl, you know. There’s nothing wrong with being a lesbian, and I wouldn’t think of you any differently if you were.’

  I debated for a second whether I should just be truthful and tell her, and to be honest I almost did. But then memories flashed through my head of the conversations she and Emma and I had spent our weekend afternoons immersed in, discussing and fantasizing about what it would be like if Gideon asked Lori out, or if Virgil Thomas kissed Emma, or if Harvey and I reached second base. It was all very well to chatter with your girlfriends about your love life regarding a guy, and share gory details, and laugh and encourage each another. But somehow it felt all wrong to discuss Alex. It felt too personal, like our relationship was too private and couldn’t be shared with others in the normal gossipy way. Maybe it was because Alex was a girl; maybe it was because I wasn’t ready yet to be open about the fact that I was into a girl; maybe talking about my love life was just something I didn’t do. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t bring myself to admit to Lori that Alex and I were an item.

  Instead I forced out a casual laugh, raised my eyebrows and snatched Romeo and Juliet back from her fingertips. ‘I don’t have a thing for Alex, Lori.’

  ‘Really?’ She sounded sincerely surprised. ‘It’s just the way she looks at you is…and you always seem to hang back and talk to her, you know…and that argument on the tennis court looked way too intense for a “bad day” rant at a stranger.’

  I shrugged. ‘We’re not strang
ers. We’re friends. But there’s nothing going on.’ I opened to Scene 5 and started copying down a few random lines, hoping she would just drop the matter but knowing somehow that wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘Do you really not fancy her? Because after we talked about girl crushes I sort of thought—’

  I sighed and looked her in the eyes, my expression steady and convincingly honest. ‘Lori, I’m not a lesbian. I like Harvey. Maybe I did idolise Alex a bit when I first arrived, but not in a romantic way, just in one of those girl crush ways…’ I couldn’t seem to stop myself. The lie just kept going and going. ‘Besides, she seriously is way too arrogant to be regarded a good role model. I mean, have you spoken to her recently?’

  Lori looked a little unnerved by my intensity, but nodded, seemingly satisfied with my response. ‘Okay, I believe you. As long as you know that I don’t mind if you’re gay.’

  I nodded. ‘It’s nice that you’re so open about alternate sexualities. But really, there’s no need. Not with me anyway.’ I felt a small pang of regret that I hadn’t just told her the truth, because there was a voice in my mind saying that it wouldn’t be so bad to have my best friend know. But something held me back, so I dropped the matter and turned back to my homework, thinking Lori would leave now that her intended topic of inquiry had been explored and successfully resolved.

  Instead she nodded again and bounced up and down on the mattress a little. ‘So what are you going to wear this afternoon?’

  I closed Romeo and Juliet with a little more force than intended.

  ‘Sorry, am I disturbing you?’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’ I stacked my books together, leaned across her, and dropped them to the floor over the side of the Dead Bed, tossing the Biro after them. ‘Screw English. Screw Mr Warner. Screw this effing paper that, let’s be honest, nobody really gives a toss about.’

  Lori smiled. After starting the medication, my mood swings had dramatically improved, and despite being a little on the irritable side still, I was finding things a lot easier to manage. I looked at Lori and shrugged in response to her question. ‘I don’t know what I should wear.’ I hoped my tone suggested that I was in need of some ideas. After all, I didn’t want to give everyone the impression that I cared as much about this date as I did about my English paper.